Bungie is continually testing Marathon behind the scenes as it attempts to recover from its poorly-received, un-NDAed Closed Alpha from earlier this year. While there have been some leaks, including new information and images that show visual improvements, the NDAs have clamped down and tests keep running with tight-lipped players.
Now, Bungie is about to do its most significant test to date, recruiting select testers to play Marathon for an entire month straight, requiring players to play for one hour in a specific window of the day, every day. Do that, and you can receive $500 at the end of the month for hitting those metrics. Here’s the email sent out about this via The Game Post:
“We really appreciate your participation and valuable feedback in our Monthly Closed Playtests so far. We are reaching out because you indicated interest in participating in future research opportunities.
“We would like to invite you to join us for our Marathon 30-Day user research study!
“This user research study is a playtest that will run for 30 consecutive days from Monday 9/8 to Tuesday 10/7, including weekends. You will be required to play for a minimum of 1 hour daily during the playtest window of 3–7pm PST on weekdays and 2–8pm PST on weekends. The study is 100% remote, so you can participate from wherever you are located. There will be a short daily survey and a weekly survey to gather your feedback.
“Upon completing the study, you will receive a $500 gift card of your choice as a thank you for your valuable time and feedback. If you only complete part of the study, you will only receive the portion of the reward based on the number of days that you have completed.”
As you can see, this is available only to those who have done Closed Playtests so far, so you can’t try to slide in now. Playing Marathon for $500 certainly does sound pretty good but the restrictions here are a little tight and you need to have those windows open every day if you want the full amount. And if we’re talking dollars, $500 for 30 hours is $16.66 an hour for what is almost a full-time work week. I’ve seen some jokes(?) saying that Bungie is desperate for people to test Marathon which is why they’re doing this, but no, that’s just not true, and this kind of thing is a common practice for testing.
You may notice that this test is running through the date that Marathon was originally supposed to launch, September 23. After the poor gameplay debut, Closed Alpha and plagiarism scandal, it was delayed indefinitely and still does not have a new release date. Sony has said it will be before March 31, 2026, so inside the fiscal year, though they didn’t fully guarantee that. I’ve heard that is still the plan internally to hit that mark, albeit the fiscal year goals relayed to me, like placing high on the NPD list for the year, seem like a stretch with the initial reception of the game, and the unlikelihood it can be fully turned around.
We are supposed to get another update in the fall after this “dark” period about what’s coming and when, including a likely launch date and more non-NDAed, more open tests closer to release, as they can’t keep doing these closed door ones forever.
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